All Hail The Heartbreaker
by teamspade
Summary: Jade West was a wildfire. She burned too hot, too strong for him to get close to without burning himself. But Spencer Reid welcomed the pain, and before he knew it he was inhaling the smoke, letting her suffocate him with her madness. She was a princess in black hair dye, and he, her knight in an FBI vest.
1. Chapter 1: Jade

Jade sat on the small counter in her kitchen, leaning slightly forward so her head didn't hit the decaying cupboards that held various broken plates, glasses and bowls. She was eating Peanut Butter straight from the jar, using her fingers to scoop it from the sides and then delivering it to her cherry red lips. Her feet dangled over the side as she kicked them back aimlessly, looking down at her chipped black toenails. She was dressed appropriately for 2 AM, wearing nothing but a large flannel, that she had acquired from an ex-boyfriend, draped over her pale frame.

She was a girl of barely seventeen, and living on her own had proved to be not vastly different than living with her father. She struggled to pay bills more than she would care to admit, and her fridge was usually bare. At that moment, it held little more than three cans of root beer, one lean cuisine, a bag of pizza rolls, one carton of yogurt, and half a carton of milk. Her pantry was even less stocked, holding only a few cans of Spaghetti O's and a single loaf of bread.

She had learned to manage on a low budget with little difficulty, adjusting to the constant feeling of a never-quite-full stomach, and often indulging in sweet things she now counted as a delicacy, like Nutella and Peanut Butter. She had lived like this before, and taking care of herself was not a new concept to her. She had been fending for herself since the age of eleven, being left to cook and forage for food on her own.

Jade had been living in the same apartment for almost a year now, having been emancipated on her sixteenth birthday and finding this place shortly after. It was run down, the ceiling covered in water stains and cracks in the foundation. The counter she sat atop was starting to peel, and Jade had even gone to the lengths of attempting to superglue it down, but to no avail. And as she ate her Peanut Butter and kicked her legs, she played with the ends of it, holding it down and then releasing it and watching as it curled away.

It was a single-room apartment, her bed tucked away in the far corner. She didn't have an actual bed frame, and her mattress sat on the floor, but she did her best to dress it up with a nice comforter and multiple pillows. She had a stuffed bunny that sat in the middle of the black and white striped blanket, never quite having the heart to throw away her childhood toy.

She tried her best to make her apartment as homey as she could, putting a small TV in front of the second hand couch that sat in the living room. It was covered in cigarette burns, half from the previous owner and half from her, but it was comfortable. Her clothes had a designated drawer but instead they lay scattered across her entire apartment floor, and you couldn't get anywhere without stepping on a pair of black jeans or lace underwear. She had a grand piano which sat in the corner, easily the most expensive thing in the entire place. She had considered selling it to support her habit, but it was something that she couldn't bear to part with. It was old and worn down and sounded off key more times than not, but Jade loved it. Writing music was something she took comfort in, and it had slowly become the only somewhat "normal" aspect of her life.

Jade's black hair hung in greasy waves over her eyelids, and she kept pushing it back with the palms of her hands to keep it from touching her sticky fingers. It was one of her bad nights, the kind where she retreated back into her mind.

It had been three hours since she last shot up, but she tried her best to go as long as she could between using. She'd had the habit since she was fifteen, but she reasoned with herself that it was kept under control. She was still fully functioning, able to pay her bills and lead whatever she had left of a normal life. She had been smoking cigarettes since she was eleven, starting shortly after her mother disappeared. She started drinking shortly after that, and by thirteen she was messing around with boys far older than she was in search of the father she never had.

She spent most of her time at school smoking out the girls' bathroom, not being able to tolerate classes like History and Science and Math. She started clipping highlights into her brown hair and wearing shirts that were cut low enough to show off the breasts that she had developed far before any other girls her age did. She was intrigued only by English and music class, and spent every lunch period in the music room, teaching herself the piano. She had friends, but none of them were of any real quality, and so she hung out mainly with older kids, girls of sixteen and seventeen and boys of eighteen and nineteen.

Her neighborhood was definitely not one of wealth, and dreading the experiences she faced at home she opted to stay out late, exploring the world around her. It began harmlessly, and at first she would hang out around the abandoned railroad passing, surrounded by bottles of rum and telling stories. She was always the youngest there, although she was never treated as such. She was accepted as one of them, and by fourteen she had the body of a twenty year old and, wanting to give herself an edgier appearance, dyed her hair black. The girls her age told her the color made her look somewhat like the devil, but she liked the way it framed her pale skin and made her blue eyes pop. She started wearing heavier make up then, dark black eyeliner and eyeshadows of dark purple and brown. She was desperate for the attention of the older kids around her, and subconsciously tried to push herself away from the look of innocence her father had liked so much on her.

She got her very first piercing during the summer at fourteen, a warm night spent in the back of the truck of some kid she wasn't too familiar with, slightly drunk but sober enough to feel the needle pinch her nose. It hurt, but she welcomed the pain, and in fact found that she had even liked it a little. She got her next piercing- her favorite one, her eyebrow- only one month later, this time making sure she was sober enough to feel the needle entering and exiting her skin. It was a new feeling, and although it made her eyes sting and water a little, it was a sensation that made her entire body tingle, and before she knew it she was getting her first tattoo.

It was done at a professional shop, but one that didn't ID her and wasn't known for being the most sterile. But she went anyway, accompanied by two boys of nineteen, and got a red ace of hearts tattooed on her left ring finger. It was the same one as Amy Winehouse, someone Jade had grown to look up to and admire. One of the boys, the one that she liked, whose name is nothing but a distant sting now, asked her if it hurt. She told him no, but the truth was it did hurt. It's just that she liked the hurt.

The same boy went on to be the one she lost her virginity to, the same summer of fourteen, in the backseat of his car, listening to the air conditioning and feeling the cracked leather seats and letting him kiss her all over. The pleasure was minimal, but the way he told her she was beautiful had ignited a fire in her veins. It was the closeness of another person that she treasured, not the act itself, but the feeling of being wanted. Her eyes were open the whole time, staring out the sunroof while on her back, looking at the stars and wondering when it would be over. He dropped her off at home afterwards, and she found herself feeling more alone than she did going in. It was not love, nor lust that she felt that night, but a feeling that she spent searching for in the beds of anyone else willing to make her feel beautiful, if only just for a moment.

A few weeks after losing her virginity, Jade turned fifteen and began seeking love anywhere she could find it. She started going to parties, hanging around bored college students, letting them get her drunk and take her to whatever bedroom was closest. Things with her dad, though she hoped would have gotten better, were getting worse, and she then spent almost every night out, often failing to make it to any of her classes. She started having an affair with a married man she met at a bar, and for a while it went well. He bought her gifts, things like necklaces and chocolate, and Jade spent hours scribbling songs into her journals about him. It was what she considered her first taste of love, and the inappropriateness of it only added to the thrill she felt in the pit of her stomach. She didn't mind being his secret, but she was always disappointed when he went home to his wife. She was sure that one day he would leave her, that they would run off together and he would buy her a house and they would get married.

But eventually he started to worry, and he'd always say "we shouldn't have done that." right after he finished nailing her, her breathing hard and her breasts exposed. She clung on to him, though, until one night he broke it off with her altogether. Jade was one for the dramatics, though, and she called his wife and told her everything. It was her first love, her first heartbreak, and the first of many toxic relationships.

She experimented with different drugs after that, party drugs and hallucinogens, not really taking to any of them in particular. She had a bad trip in the basement of someone-she-didn't-know's house, after he gave her a tab of drug she hadn't known either. She ended up hyperventilating in the bathtub, crying and clawing at the skin on her thighs. She kept searching, though, willing to take anything that would keep her from reaching into the dark place in her mind.

Heroin was the first drug to grab her attention. She immediately liked the needle, making her think back to her piercings at age thirteen, and how the sharp pain had intrigued her. She loved everything about it, in fact, and the first time she did it she watched the boy giving it out cook it up with hungry eyes, taking in the way he did it, the way his hands moved, imprinting it all into her memory for later.

She began buying it on her own shortly thereafter, waiting until her father went to sleep to sit cross-legged on her bedroom floor, enjoying the way the lighter burnt the spoon, the way it slid up into the syringe, the way the smell stung her nose.

She retreated from her friends, then, spending more and more time alone in her room. She no longer attended parties and went out all night, now that she found a way to escape without actually leaving her room. She started to get more comfortable with it, and found that doing it after school would make it less painful- both mentally and physically- when her father touched her.

She got herself emancipated at age sixteen and dropped out of school softly thereafter. She assumed her father had found more girls to abuse after she left, and her guesses were confirmed when the BAU came knocking on her door only two weeks earlier.

They were looking for a serial rapist, and from what they knew, he had only one living relative. A daughter. She hadn't been compliant, and lashed out at them for attempting to talk to her about her father. She knew that there were girls out there, girls like her that needed help, but she had gotten better, and she didn't want to be dragged back down into his world again. The nightmares had stopped, and she didn't want to ever get them back. One of the agents, Agent Morgan, was the one that gave her the hardest time. She didn't like him, and especially didn't like how he let himself into her apartment and demanded help from her that was under no obligation to give.

It was the other one she had grown a fondness for, the tall and thin one. He had sparked her interest right away, and he was the only one who didn't treat her like a child. She knew he went snooping around her apartment and that he had seen her gear, but he never said anything about it, which she appreciated. He fiddled with his hands when he spoke to her, and his voice was gentle but it never wavered. He had bags under his eyes like he hadn't slept in weeks, his tie was crooked and his hair was messy.

The first time she was brought to the interrogation room he had been the one to sit across from her. He offered her some of his coffee, which she took greedily, and he asked her to trust him. She crossed her arms and wouldn't look at him, not until he leaned in close to her and lifted up his sleeves. He had scars that she recognized immediately, the same scars that she wore after she shot up. He didn't seem the type to do something like that, but she saw in his eyes that he's suffered more than he led on. He was the only one that managed to get her to open up, to admit what her father had done and where he might be. She ended up spending several long nights in a police station after that, helping them track him down.

She learned the agent's name was Dr. Reid, but his first name felt better on her tongue, so Spencer it was. He memorized her coffee order after the first time, and she spent hour after hour in the station listening to him talk about statistics and facts, and he listened to her talk about her experiences. It was the first time she talked about it out loud, fearing the way people would look at her afterward. She didn't like to be pitied. But he didn't look at her how other people would, he didn't look at her like a child that needed to be protected. He looked at her like she was a human being. He gave her his card after that, took her aside and told her to call him if she wanted to talk about anything, or if she started having nightmares again, something he said he knew about all too well. Or, he said, if she just wanted a distraction.

In those two weeks she had grown fond of him, and now that her father was caught and in custody, the team had left her alone. Her stomach was twisted in knots, and she missed him, missed the doctor that had made her feel safe, even just for a moment. But now she was alone, and her dad was in her nightmares again, and she was left feeling like she did after she spent the night in the boy's car, looking up at the stars. It was a feeling that made her feel small again, like a child sitting perched at the window, waiting for a mother that she would never hear from again to return. So she put away her jar of peanut butter and sat herself down on the sheets that had long been stained dark with menstrual blood and injected a liquid paradise to distract herself from the hell around her.

And so the young girl, one of only seventeen, doused herself with hate, and set fire to her sadness.


	2. Chapter 2: Spencer

Nightmares were something Spencer Reid was familiar with.

He awoke from sleep in a hurry, jerking forward into his bed with such force that sent scorching hot pain into his neck. He took a deep breath and winced at the feel of it, but let it spread down his neck and into his spine, waking him up and reminding him that he was fully awake now and, in fact, very much alive.

His nightmares were often memories from childhood, but not the ones where he was beaten or bullied in school. Those memories weren't as troubling for him. They were often memories of him in his mother's bed, so small, curled up into her chest. The memories of her slowly deteriorating, decaying like the house she refused to tend to around them.

To watch one die, that was something he had learned to cope with. But to watch somebody rot from the inside out? To watch your own mother lie in her bed for days at a time, to learn how to pay the bills so you don't have to go without heat, to feel the sheer helplessness he did, knowing that despite all his infinite wisdom, the one thing he could not do was cure the one person he desperately needed as a child.

It was not unusual for him to have dreams about cases he'd recently worked, either. They often tugged at the back of his mind, asking him to relive them, begging him to subside back into the darkness he had fought just years earlier. It had grown easy to ignore it as time passed, but he found himself feeling like he had some unfinished business. The case he worked had- to put the term lightly- a happy ending. The rapist was caught. No lives were lost, as he went down without too much of a struggle, and he got to back to sleeping in his Red Dwarf sheets that covered his queen sized bed. He was supposed to feel good after cases like that, cases with minimal loss and all survivors. He allowed himself to think of himself as somewhat of a hero in these cases to ease the burden he carried, a bit like the way Gideon used to keep a notebook of all the people he helped. He didn't have to write them down since they were all already burned into his memory, but it was the same general idea. Letting yourself feel good about the work you did and about the lives you saved.

Reid ran a hand through his knotted hair and considered going back to sleep, glancing over at the old manual clock next to his bed that read 2:13 AM. He was afraid, however, that she would haunt his dreams again with her eyes so vividly blue and her skin so ghostly pale that he would never want to wake up again. She was like a siren, singing to him in the most beautiful voice he had ever heard, so deep and raw that it cut through him like a knife and left him bleeding movie scenes. In the two weeks he had known her she had managed to infect his thoughts, making it hard for him to focus around her.

2:13 AM, and he wondered what she was doing right at that very moment. He wanted to know what she did when she couldn't sleep, he wanted to know where she went to hide from the world, he wanted to know what made her laugh and what made her cry and what made her retreat from the world around her. He wanted to know how she could laugh in the face of her childhood abuser as he was loaded into the back of a police car. He wanted to know how a girl of her age and her stature was able to face her demons like that, when his still lurked within the shadows of his closet and in the presence beneath his bed.

He knew little about her, only being able to go off of what she had told him. He had found her poison when he snooped around her room, the stash of syringes and bent spoons in a pile by her bed that she had not bothered to hide when the FBI stepped foot through her door. He knew it right away, having been all too familiar with it himself at a low point in his life. This peaked his interest, and the rest of the time he spent watching her when she wasn't looking, searching for the signs of opiate abuse. They weren't too bad, but they were evident when she nodded off in the middle of Hotch talking or slurred her words when she wasn't being careful. He hadn't wanted to come right out and ask her about, didn't want to scare her off and send her running when they just got her support on the case.

She intrigued him, though, the way she spoke with absolute confidence and held herself in such a manner that you would be completely fooled into believing she was much older than the young age of seventeen. She drew attention to herself when she walked into a room without speaking a word or batting a single eyelash. He closed eyes and thought of the morning they caught him, the way the 6 AM sun dripped down all the way to her thighs and made the tips of her black hair turn golden in the light. She wore a calm expression but her eyes spoke stories of sorrow yet to come, and he had realized then and there that her battle was not over, not even close to being over, because although her father was locked up the memories were not, and they bled from her eyes and seeped across the room leaving a hurricane in the place of a girl.

He had a feeling this case would be one to follow him around. He was not a hero in this story, not even close, because that girl would only go home to an empty apartment, running on an empty stomach, and fill her empty heart with the heaviest of poisons. He had seen so much horror in his life, so much sadness and so much suffering. Partly on his behalf and partly on the behalf of others he encountered during work, but nothing quite stung him like watching the loss of innocence in someone. He wondered if he would ever see that girl again. He wondered if she would live another year. Another month. Another week. He wondered if she would get the chance to grow up, to walk down the aisle, maybe hold a child in her arms someday. Then he wondered if, instead, he would stumble upon her grave one day, the grave of a girl he once knew, a girl that could have been, a girl that almost was.

Reid rubbed his eyes until blurry images began to form in his vision, opting to push off the covers and drag himself out of bed rather than try and fall back asleep to the images that waited for him just beyond his consciousness. He wasn't one to sleep for long periods at a time, often finding himself tossing and turning all night and then falling asleep at work or on the jet. He didn't mind it, though, because less sleep gave him more free time. Although recently he dreaded being awake due to the headaches, and dreaded being asleep due to the nightmares. He was stuck in a state of purgatory, and he couldn't help but ask himself what he had done to deserve it.

He walked into his bathroom and turned on the light, squinting at how it blinded him before his vision blinked through. He stared at himself in the mirror, taking note of the heavy dark circles under his eyes and the shadow over his top lip that he could never shave quite right. Reid didn't like to use profanity too often but he was, to put it in the best words he could, looked like shit. Complete and utter shit. And he didn't mean in the way he usually did, with his beat up sneakers and messy hair and crooked tie. He looked tired. He looked half-dead, which was a similar look to the one he had way back when, when he was still using drugs. He looked how Jade did. Pale, hollowed from the inside out. He's looked worse and worse since the headaches and nightmares started, but since working that case just a few weeks ago his cheeks have caved in just a bit more, and his eyes have sunken in and his skin was a sickly shade of pale.

It wasn't for his own sake he was worried about his appearance, per say, but the way the team would react to it. They were known to baby him, and God only knows what Morgan would do if he started to fall apart. Unless, of course, he was using again. Then the team would back off. That was for certain.

Reid didn't like to talk about his run in with drugs more than necessary. In fact, he didn't even like to let himself think about it. It ripped a hole through the fabric of his being and consumed him in a darkness that left him drowning, and every now and then he still gasped for air.

He was clean now, though, and he was grateful for that; but it would be so easy to slip back into the coma that once held his mind captive, let it take over his thoughts and free the burden he carried that got harder and heavier each day he went on. It would be so easy to slip the liquid back into his veins, to feel the familiar rush take over his body and give him a false sense of love that he had yet to find in another human being.

He knew better than that, of course, but it's not like the idea never crossed his mind. It had been years since he last used, but it was always there tugging on his subconscious, begging him to pick it back up, to let it love him, to let it soothe him to sleep. It whispered to him, told him it was the only thing that could love a boy like him, the only thing that could make it all go away, the only thing that would ever be willing to truly accept him. He ignored it, letting the whispers fade away until they were just background noise. He would never be willing to put his job in jeopardy again, not willing to give up everything he had worked so hard for. And so when it beckoned to him from the corners of the darkest parts of his bedroom, he told it to go away, and hid back under the covers.

Reid washed his face quickly, not being able to bear the sight of himself anymore, and walked into the kitchen of his apartment to make himself a cup of coffee. He knew it was the middle of the night and he probably shouldn't be pouring caffeine into his system if he had hopes of going back to sleep later, but his body craved the warmness of it. He never could resist a good cup of coffee. He found out that he and Jade had that in common. The smell was beginning to fill the apartment, and it was a smell that he took solace in. He imagined the rest of the team at that very moment, home with their families and fast asleep. He thought of what it might feel like to go to sleep next to somebody. The last person he slept next to was his mother when he was very young, and since then he had been alone. He didn't mind it, though, because it was hard to miss something you never had. He didn't know the sensation of waking up next to somebody he loved. And although he didn't like to admit it to himself, he didn't think he ever would.

The call came at 2:48 AM. He was nestled in his leather couch, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, sipping his coffee like it was hot chocolate. It was the set up for a small child, really, but Reid didn't care too much to act like an adult when he didn't have to. His cell phone was old, and when he picked it up he squinted at the number, not recognizing it and not knowing who would be calling at this time of night. It could be for a case, he supposed, but he would recognize the number if it were. He had everybody on the team's number memorized. He had every number that had ever called him memorized.

When he picked up and a girl on the other line spoke he put a face to her voice immediately. She didn't bother with an introduction. She didn't need one. He knew it straight away, and it made him nervous, the way she spoke. It wasn't an uncommon thing for him to give his card to the people he worked cases on as a comfort to them, but what was uncommon is them actually calling him. He didn't mind, though, and he sat straight up the moment she began talking.

"Can you, um… I was just…" She tried, sounding tired and at a loss for words. He suspected she was in need of a distraction, one he often looked to himself when he had the urge to use.

"Do you want me to come over?" He asked.

"You'd do that?" She asked, knowing he was a solid thirty minute drive from her apartment in her bad neighborhood and it was almost three in the morning. She also most likely knew damn well that he would.

"'Course I would." His smile was evident in his voice, and even though she was silent on her end, he thought he could sense hers too.

He took in her appearance the moment she opened the door. Her hair was dark and greasy, hanging in waves that crashed over her shoulders and down to the bottom of her breasts. She wore a tank top and a flannel that was sizes too big for her, leading Reid to the conclusion that it most likely came from an ex-boyfriend. He smiled at her, reminding himself not to profile her. She didn't like when he profiled her.

She gave him a smile back, opening the door and allowing the tall agent into her home. He noted how messier it had become in the weeks he had last seen her, and that was when the FBI busted down her door and demanded she help them. She hadn't been too friendly, then, but at least her place was clean.

There were clothes all over the floor, and she made no effort to step over them as she walked him into her small living area. Aside from the mess it seemed the same as it was last time, and smelled deeply of perfume and what he could only assume was hairspray. She leaned back against the island that stood where the living room ended and the small kitchen area began, fiddling with the ring she wore on her left ring finger. It looked old and had an old stone on it, and it made him curious to think where she got it from and why she played with it so often, but he decided against a night of playing twenty questions. She opened her mouth, face flushed slightly, and began stuttering half-assed excuses of why she called him over. He shook his head at her.

"You don't have to explain yourself," he told her gently, and she smiled down at her floor and scratched at her pale arm. He couldn't help it, and before he knew it he was analyzing her, watching her body language, studying the way she held herself. From his knowledge she was about two or three hours since she last used. She trembled slightly before she pulled herself away from the counter and walked closer towards him.

"I'm sorry I called you like that," she apologized, "I just wanted… I don't know what I wanted." Her lips stopped moving but stayed parted, and he waited silently for her to continue. She looked him in the eye, after a moment, and said, "You know what I want to do? I want to watch a movie."

And they did. He sat on her cigarette-burnt couch, watching an old black and white horror film that he had picked out from her impressively vast collection and making commentary every now and then that she didn't seem to mind. Maybe even enjoyed. She would roll her eyes at all of the outlandish parts but never take her eyes off the screen, and not once did she ask him to shut up when he spoke and not once did she look at him strange. Sometimes she asked more questions, and sometimes she added on with a fact herself. They made popcorn and Jade burnt it on purpose and slathered it with butter and salt which he assumed was a luxury for her. He ate it anyway, liking the way the salt burnt his tongue and how she covered her mouth when she laughed.

It was 4:23 AM by the time she second movie came to an end, Jade tucked underneath a heavy blanket. The apartment was freezing, but that was most likely due to her not paying her heating bill. He reminded himself to slip a few twenty dollar bills somewhere casually in her house. She shivered and looked at him with heavy eyelids, hesitating before shifting her body so that her head rested on his chest. His heart sped up and he refrained from breathing, afraid to do something that would shake the sleeping girl. It was a new sensation to him, being this close to another person. But he felt sleep tugging heavily on his eyes, and soon he drifted off into a dreamless sleep accompanied by the faint snores from her lipstick stained lips.


	3. Chapter 3: Jade

Jade was awoken to the sounds of early morning rain hitting her dirt streaked window. The sun was just beginning to rise, sending a beam of light straight through her apartment and into her eyes. She rubbed her eyelids that were thick with sleep and propped herself up more, blinking away the colors that swirled in front of her vision.

Spencer danced around the kitchen, attempting to correctly tie his tie and comb the knots from his hair and put himself back together all at once. She watched him in raw unaware silence, taking in the way his hair fell in curls around the frame of his face, and the way the light made his brown eyes appear almost green. He had two different colored socks on, one purple and one blue. His shoes were lost, drifting somewhere in the sea of clothes she had flooding the apartment. She looked down at her own pale feet, wiggling the toes that peaked out from the blanket, black nail polish dark and chipping.

She hadn't fallen asleep with the blanket on her, and she could imagine how she had shivered in her sleep, her body reacting to the unforgiving cold air of her apartment. He must have shifted the quilt onto her when he woke, covering her thin, frail and bruised-all-over legs, ceasing the jerking movement.

She noticed then that she was still shivering, though she knew herself better than to think it was from the cold temperature. She had went a majority of the night without giving in to her demons, and this is what she gained in return.

The quilt was thick and heavy, patched together by her mother when she was just a baby. Each patch represented something. She knew most of them, but some of them her mother had kept for when she was older. But that day never came, and now Jade twisted the ends of the worn out fabric between her fingers.

She stretched her arms up high and yawned, mimicking the way the pretty girl always woke up in the romantic comedy movies that she claimed she loathed but secretly admired.

He turned around and caught her then, in the midst of pouring himself a cup of coffee. He took his attention away from it then to focus on her. He smiled at her, cheeks red from the warm air that radiated off the windows which were permanently shut.

His perpetual clumsiness came into play then, causing him to spill the coffee down the breast of his shirt and the sleeve of his right arm. He jumped around then, and Jade knew that if he cursed he would have right then. She stood up and tugged down at the oversized flannel she had thrown over her body. She had no paper towels in the house, just toilet paper, so she grabbed a handful of that and attempted to soak up some of the liquid burning up his arm, causing him to wince in pain as she touched it.

She raised her eyebrow at him, toilet paper almost completely soaked through now.

"Let me get this straight. You've been shot before, right? And you're in pain over a cup of coffee?"

"I don't think you understand. The coffee was hot."

Jade let out a sad excuse of a laugh, throwing what was left of the toilet paper into her garbage can.

"Oh, I understand it just fine. Understand that you're a baby."

"Well, I'm a baby with an IQ of 187, then," he added smugly.

Jade snorted. "An IQ of 187 and you still can't manage to pour your liquids without getting them all over yourself."

He eyed her down carefully. "Don't push it, West. I carry a gun."

He patted at his tie with another crumpled handful of toilet paper, and she could tell he was late for work due to the way he was jumping around prior to him noticing she was awake. His moments had slowed now, though, and she wondered if just a part of him wanted to stay.

"I, ah, better get going," He said when her eyes never left his, glancing at the watch and then back up at her.

She nodded.

"You gonna call me?"

"Would it be okay if I did?"

And when she said yes, he slipped out of her apartment before the rest of the world was awake.

Jade didn't sleep much anymore. She stay up for most of the night and still managed to wake up relatively early. She used to spend hours in her bed when she was younger, wrapped up in blankets, without so much as moving for hours. She didn't like to do that anymore, not since she was sixteen and left the home that had caused her so much distress and strife. She'd been doing better since then. And even though she hadn't had sex in over a year, she couldn't shake the immediate feeling of emptiness that followed when someone left her apartment in the morning.

Jade stood at the local park closest to her place. It was a shitty neighborhood, the kind people rolled up their windows and locked their doors while driving through. She had her arms crossed over her chest, shifting her weight impatiently from foot to foot. She made the choice to meet him in public, wary of seeing him in any place too private or intimate. If she had it her way she would never see him again, but the harsh reality was that she needed what he had, and at the price he had it for.

She noticed him immediately, the way he walked carelessly towards her, hands deep in his pockets and smirk etched permanently on his clean-shaven face. She tried to avoid his gaze but his eyes never parted from her, looking up and down at the length of her covered up body. He approached slowly, like a shark circling it's prey. She had volunteered herself as victim, though, and had no choice but to wait for him to make the kill.

"Sup, sweetness?" he asked when he was within earshot, popping his gum and licking it from his lips. His lips curled up into the lazy smile he knew she always liked what seemed like a lifetime ago.

She looked over her shoulder, always looking out for any police that would bust them. The park wasn't exactly known for being child-friendly, and was instead where teenagers came to get laid and addicts came to get their next fix. It would be easier to just go to his house and pick it up, but she wouldn't be caught dead alone there anymore, not even for a minute.

"Long time no see, princess," he mused at her, eyebrows pulled up in a constant state of amusement. His jacket smelled like cigarettes and the cheap cologne he knew she always hated, and his breath smelled like whiskey. "Did you miss me?"

Jade scoffed.

"Not a chance." Her breath came out as smoke, and she pulled her sleeves over her hands. It was bitter out despite being early spring, but the sun was bright and strong and it caused her to squint her eyes up at him. Her nose was running, and the cold just made her shiver harder. It wasn't the worst she'd ever felt, but she needed more, and she needed it soon.

He made a tsk noise and held a hand over his chest, imitating the feeling of being hurt- one feeling she knew from experience he was incapable of.

"Just gimme my shit, alright?"

She meant to come off as intimidating, but he knew her too well to ever be intimidated by anything she said or did.

He shrugged and pulled the drugs from his pockets, holding it out to her and yanking it back when she was about to snatch it.

"Ah ah ah, Ms. West," he said with a click of his tongue, as if she was a misbehaved student, "I believe there is something you owe me first, hm?"

Just the sound of his voice was enough to make her nauseous, and the heat of the withdrawals were enough on their own. She wiped her running nose with the back of her hand before digging through her pockets to pull out the crumpled $20 bill. She hesitated with it for a moment, knowing that her source of income had been all but dried up recently when her father was locked away. She started blackmailing him when she moved away, being able to pry a good $250 a month from him in exchange for her silence.

She didn't like doing it, didn't like having to see him, even if it was only for a few minutes once a month. But she was desperate for the drug that made her feel home, and if she had to endure his sweaty hands slipping the cash into hers for a few seconds, then she would.

Now that he was away, she didn't know where her next paycheck would come from, and she was dwindling down to her last $150. It killed her to part with what little money she had left, but her body did not let up, causing her to ache from head to foot, and it told her that once it was back in her system it would not matter where her next meal was coming from, not a thing would matter. So she handed over the cash, fingertips grazing his, and he took his sweet time holding onto it.

He must have read her mood, cocking his head to the side and looking at her with knit together eyebrows.

"Money troubles?"

"Just give it to me."

"You know," he started, keeping the two small baggies just out of her reach, "word around here is that your old man's gonna be away for a long time."

Jade said nothing, just shrugged her coat closer to her body.

He took this as his cue to keep talking.

"If you need a discount, I'm sure we could come up with an agreement," he grinned, taking a step closer to her.

She kept her head low and her eyes down. It wasn't like it was a new concept, fooling around with him. They'd been somewhat of a couple for the better half of six months, before she moved out on her own. She was his shiny toy, and he was her distraction while she still lived at home. A distraction that she loved, but a distraction nonetheless.

He would take care of her if she let him, and she knew that. He would pay her electric bill and keep her fridge stocked with sweets and never let her worry about money again. It would be so easy to crawl back into him. So simple, to spend the days lying around naked on his mattress, sharing a cigarette and getting high. She could watch all his friends sit around the shabby kitchen table he had, packaging all the drugs they sold. She could rub his shoulders and bring them beer, sit around as a pretty thing for the men to look at while they were doing the work. It wouldn't be a good life, she knew that, but it's a life she's had before. A life she's used to. A life her mother had up until she left. The kind of life she was born into, and destined to grow into.

She didn't want to do that anymore, though. A year ago she would have accepted her fate, would have dropped out of high school just to play prisoner in his arms. But she didn't want to anymore. She didn't want to settle for his backhanded compliments and the way he slipped into bed smelling like another girl's perfume. She didn't want to keep believing that's what she deserved. She wanted to see what Spencer Reid had seen in her.

"I miss you, baby," he cooed, coming closer to her with every breath he took. She couldn't look him in the eyes, the ones that knew her too well; the ones that could look at her with the love she craved so desperately she was willing to give up her entire year of good work to feel again.

He tucked a piece of her dark hair behind her ear, and she closed her eyes and let him, let him move so his breath was on her, his face inches from hers, the heat of his body so warm and inviting she almost melted into his arms the second he brought his lips to hers. His mouth tasted like whiskey and his jacket smelled of smoke and the cologne she always hated. He pulled her closer against him, held her still to stop her from shaking, and took her home.

As he did, she thought about the tall doctor who had been in her apartment just that morning, the one with the curly brown hair and the smile that always looked lop-sided. She decided she would call him when this was all over.


End file.
